Mask culture gets spectacular revival

FESTIVAL

By DYLAN MURRAY
WHAT was once thought to have been a part of traditions lost to time and the installation of religion is proven to be thriving today.
The Toare Mask Festival of the Gulf is truly a spectacle to behold.
The masks were first brought out and showed off for the country in 2003 after the practice of making masks was thought to have gone extinct in the province after the missionaries came. This was during a Gulf Provincial Executive Council and Assembly meeting in Karama Village, Central Kerema.
Previous studies had been conducted into traditional masks and which groups of people in the country still practiced making masks.
Former director of the National Cultural Commission (NCC) Dr Jacob Simet himself had done research into traditional masks in the country and nowhere were there records of the continued practice of making masks in Gulf. According to them, when missionaries came in and brought with them Western influence, this particular cultural practice died out – the only known (if not well-known) mask festival in the country was the PNG Mask Festival in East New Britain.
So it was quite a surprise to him when in 2003, EMTV televised the welcoming before the Gulf Provincial Government meeting in Central Kerema, where dancers from Toare village donned masks to welcome members of the assembly.
Dr Simet reached out through NCC staff and managed to get in touch with the two men who would eventually start the Toare Mask Festival: late Ovoroa Juaoa and late Maso Lahoveta.
Through talks with the two gentlemen who had informed Dr Simet about the masks and the dances, work started on a festival to showcase this practice that had been thought extinct.
In 2005, the first Toare Mask Festival was held in Toare village, Central Kerema.
And then in 2007, Governor Chris Haiveta officially opened the festival and announced that it would be held annually in Toare. But proving that things never go as planned, the festival was not held annually as announced, due to funding constraints in some of the years that followed.
This year the festival was held on June 10 in Toare village.
I was privileged to witness it in person, and may I just say… Basil Greg and Robert Oeka were right.
I didn’t know Kerema until I went and saw for myself.

Day 1 – Journey in
When people talk about Gulf or Kerema, the immediate thought is 600. These three digits have been made famous through songs, stories, pictures of buses with the numbers painted on to let passengers know the route.
My first impression of Kerema: Far, far away.
The journey there for me invoked a mix of emotions. For one, I was glad I was travelling and I got to see a different part of the region and country. Second, I was appalled at how long the journey was.
We left Port Moresby in a private vehicle (a 10-seater) in the dead of night. We didn’t have a lot of legroom so having a small number of stops to stretch my legs annoyed me.
But by the time it was 6am and I could see the landscape to the right and left of the vehicle, I was taken aback; the swamp and jungle that seemed to blur past us as we sped and swerved from side-to-side to avoid potholes was breathtaking.
It’s the type of scenery you’d love to be able to rewind and watch again. And I found myself thinking, “how could something so untamed look so beautiful?”
After a few stops and speeding through Mekeo, we arrived Kerema around 9am; we made it to Toare village at a little past 10am.
I was staying with a family from there, in the house of Senior Magistrate Oakaiva Oiveka.
The people were welcoming despite what I had been told about the people in Kerema. The stereotypes about them loving poi, betel nut and tea were true, but I loved those things too so I fit right in.
It was a 20-minute walk from the main Kerema road to Toare situated more than a hundred metres from the ocean shore. From the verandah of the house we were in I could hear the waves crashing and that’s just how I fell asleep.
That was the end of Friday, June 9.

Day 2 – The festival
At 6am, the community was already awake and getting ready for the festival, having started preparations months in advance.
By 8am, some dance groups were already making their way towards the arena where the festival would be held.
There were huts lined up towards the back of the arena where the masks were kept. People were not allowed to see the masks until the performances.
The sound of kundu drums rang through the air and reverberated across the mouth of a river that ran near the small church and school houses and out towards the sea.
Then at 10am, we got word that Governor Chris Haiveta was coming in via helicopter.
Governor Haiveta, Minister for Tourism, Art and Culture Isi Henry Leonard, as well as the Managing Director of TotalEnergies Jean-Marc Noiray were welcomed by the Opu Cultural Group of Toare village. The dancers – young women and young men with bows and arrows – went out to meet them at the helicopter in a dance that looked like they were telling a story of how their ancestors met the first missionaries.

Each group that followed the start of the festival performed as if they were telling stories about a particular period in time.
Their dances and songs told legends, stories of love, stories of loss, stories that captured the histories and stories that screamed, “we are here”.
To the untrained eye, some of the masks looked the same. But people from all over East and Central Kerema were invited to perform in the festival.
Toare villaged opened the festival with their Meu and Heve Hokoro masks. Watching these two masked dancers accompanied by other dancers singing and beating their kundu drums made me think of this one traditional tale about the children who followed the two spirits through the bush to get home.
I can’t remember where that was from. The Oa Loea masks from Miaru were particularly captivating.
One was a crocodile and the other was a shark, and being far from East Sepik, I felt a kinship with these people just because of these masks.
Some of the masks looked scary, so I would understand why missionaries would have wanted these practices to be done away with.
Some looked like evil spirits themselves. So much so that my thoughts were thrown over the Bismark to the Tubuan masks in East New Britain.
And these were just a few of the masks donned by dancers from about 20 different groups.
The festival ran from 11am to 4pm. There were small disturbances here and there by people under the influence of alcohol, but all in all, the festival was worth travelling those donkey hours across those some-odd kilometres.
I can honestly say I will be going back for another taste.

Preservation
The NCC’s executive manager in charge of cultural festivals David Tain said the commission and the country had a big task ahead with trying to preserve this part of Gulf.
Tain said the NCC was partnering with sister agencies, Tourism Promotion Authority (TPA) and the National Museum and Art Gallery (NMAG) to try to promote and preserve the Toare Mask Festival and the masks themselves.
“The masks are destroyed every three years and new ones are made. But what happens when those who know how to make them are gone and the next generation don’t know?” he asked.
Tain who was part of the NCC team who had tried to and successfully established the festival in 2005, said the NCC was hoping that the NMAG would step in to help preserve some of these masks, through talks with the Gulf people of course.
He said he also hoped the TPA would jump on board to promote the festival and bring in outside interest and business to the people there.
Throughout the years since its inception, the festival has also garnered outside interest itself and hopes to continue to do so.
In 2012, dancers travelled to Honiara, Solomon Islands to participate in the Pacific Arts Festival. In 2014, dancers attended the Melanesian Arts Festival in Port Moresby.
And in 2015, some of these dancers were invited to open the Pacific Games where they met Prince Andrew.

This year’s festival was faciliated by the NCC in partnership with TotalEnergies, following a group of French tourists who made the journey to Toare Village to see the masks in 2022.
Gulf Governor Chris Haiveta sponsored the festival with K54,000. Haiveta called for these skills and traditions to be preserved before they really did die out.
He said traditions should be passed down through practical means such as the making of the masks and the telling of the stories behind the said masks.
“To those who are singing, to those who are making the bows and arrows, to those who are making the masks, doing the paintings and telling the stories: Pass them on,” he urged his people.
“Pass them on to your children, pass them on to your grandchildren, to your family. That is your responsibility.”
The culture has indeed persevered, and I am just one of many who hope it perseveres and gets passed on for many more years to come.